Frustrated by a lack of informed and honest review websites covering a wide range of electronic music, I write them myself.

Wednesday, November 19, 2014

Biosphere - Patashnik

Apollo: 1994

Patashnik is very much a transitional album for Geir Jenssen, which is odd considering it’s only the second Biosphere release in a discography that includes some dozen or so LPs. Even this early in his career though, the man from Northern Norway was looking beyond the ambient techno he helped define, away from the dance floors and chill-out rave tents and towards more noble pursuits like film scores and art galleries. Well, at least a Levi advertisement, the single Novelty Waves earning him some extra coin for its usage in a jeans commercial. And why not? With its groovy techno beat and stone-cold electro sounds, can you think of a better soundtrack for Depression Era Mid-West America? Wait, what?

What I’m getting at here is, while Microgravity’s rave roots were inescapable, Patashnik doesn’t indulge in them as often. Even when Jenssen does make a dance floor friendly track, it comes off as lip-service, many of his rhythms rudimentary as far as techno of the time was concerned. The aforementioned Novelty Waves is definitely one of the stronger beats found here, but Seti Project is little more than standard high-energy trance. You’d think ‘trance’ and ‘Biosphere’ would be a match made in arctic heaven, yet there’s little in Seti Project that you couldn’t find on dozens of Eye-Q or MFS records. Meanwhile, the titular cut doesn’t sound far off from an early Aphex Twin leftover, Botanical Dimensions carries on the ‘bleep’ techno movement in a quietly subdued manner, while Caboose and The Shield are essentially recycled ambient dub grooves. At least Decryption’s slow ambient techno pulse far better serves the Biosphere stylee than the rest of these tracks. Not that the melodies, synth sounds and song craft contained in all these tracks are bunk, but the rhythms oddly date Patashnik even more so than Microgravity’s offerings.

The ambient compositions, however, sound like they were intended for an entirely different album. Opener Phantasm is all kinds of creepy with children intoning they had shared dreams, and a melody sounding like an off-key radar-ping metronome only adds to the eerie atmosphere. Following that, Startoucher is endlessly desolate and cold, even with a charming bit of dialog about reaching out to the stars at night - you just know ol’ Geir was inspired by the dead of Tromsø winter on this one. Further along the album, Mir takes you to the lonely Russian space station, while En-Trance is… a completely different track from everything else under the Biosphere banner to that point. Gentle, strumming guitars? What are you trying to do, Geir, make ‘real’ music or something? Because you’d be totally awesome at it!

Despite the differing styles of music on Patashnik, they’re all arranged such that it makes for an agreeable listen from start to finish – Jenssen knows how to sequence an LP, even if he only has a general theme to build upon. Following this one though, he’d tighten his inspirations up to such a degree, he’d leave several ambient classics in his wake.